This threequel definitely belongs in the conversations of the MCU's worst entries. Truthfully it was kind of baffling to see just how bad this film is.
As a comic-book geek I never really got on board with the MCU's approach to Ant-Man and Wasp, I would have much rather seen Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly play Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne instead. Even though I'm not particularly huge on the franchise, they did have this quirk with their take on humor that appealed to many (except myself) and the smaller scale missions felt refreshing to some degree. I can commend Peyton Reed and his team trying to be different, turning it into an epic Quantum Realm adventure with some serious stakes. I was all for it, and whoever cut those trailers deserves an award for making it look and feel epic, cause it absolutely does not.
Whatever the characters were going through didn't exactly feel organic. It really felt half-assed. We just left Rudd's Scott Lang and his daughter Cassie with a happy reunion in AVENGERS: ENDGAME. So to see Cassie be a rebel and a sudden genius all of a sudden was just so jarring. Speaking of Cassie, Kathryn Newton is pretty horrible in the role. I don't understand why they replaced Emma Fuhrmann. In what little screen time Fuhrmann had in ENDGAME, displaying her tears of joy for her father, felt more compelling than Newton did here. Newton's delivery is so dry and her rebellious attitude comes off as a try hard. It just didn't work for me.
Also a nitpick, but why is every teen a super genius now? If they were going to make her a super genius helping the Pyms create a Quantum device that communicates a signal, then why wasn't her genius at least slightly established perviously? Oh yeah and she gets a super suit and does everything the other two can do. They should have taken a breath or two to develop all this properly showcasing Scott teaching her to be Stature, mirroring Scott's journey to becoming Ant-Man.
Evangeline Lilly has nothing to do in this film and her accurate haircut isn't really doing her any favors in this one. Her father Michael Douglas is just along for the ride as well and her mother Michelle Pfeiffer has a lot more to do this time around. She does the most tropey thing ever, by not revealing information that would have helped the Ant-Family WAY earlier, claiming it was "protection."
Jonathan Majors is the only thing in the film that had any substance. Majors also commands the screen very well and felt menacing in some regard, but yet it still didn't grip me as Brolin's Thanos or Hiddleston's Loki. A lot of that has to do with how crappy the film is. MODOK is also horribly executed. I know the character is a hard sell, BUT this iteration didn't do the character any favors. The Avengers game did a WAY better job handling the character than the MCU. The change is Corey Stoll's Darren Cross is deformed into MODOK after the events of the first film. With one interaction with Cassie he chooses "not to be a dick" and then has a heroic death, in which it all felt so awkward and lame. Such a waste of a villain, he was basically a one-off henchmen.
I feel that Peyton Reed and writer Jeff Loveness missed out on some compelling storytelling by not following through with the premise of Scott wanting to help Kang because of the promise of being given time with Cassie back. All the Quantum Realm stuff also felt small in scale. I compare it to the first THOR film where it just took place in a town, and here there was no grandness to the Quantum Realm, aside from the freedom fighters who oppose Kang's oppression. More could have been explored in that arena.
I also felt there would've been more weight to the end of the film if Scott died with Kang. I knew he wasn't going to diem but I wanted it to happen with the line "I don't have to win, we both have to lose," which could have been something motivates Cassie to join the young Avengers (which it looks like they're building to) moving forward. It's as if they also had a mandate to make the film more family friendly which it seemed like they tried to aim for.
The kick-off to Phase 5 isn't exactly good. I feel as though they dropped the ball, but given their track record (even though it's been meh lately) I don't think the MCU would falter by the time KANG DYNASTY and SECRET WARS comes along, as it's their big tentpole films, but I do think the MCU needs to go back to the drawing board and figure out why Phase 1-3 worked better than it does in Phase 4-5. Currently for me, only NO WAY HOME and WAKANDA FOREVER come out on top compared to the rest.
3/10.
As a comic-book geek I never really got on board with the MCU's approach to Ant-Man and Wasp, I would have much rather seen Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly play Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne instead. Even though I'm not particularly huge on the franchise, they did have this quirk with their take on humor that appealed to many (except myself) and the smaller scale missions felt refreshing to some degree. I can commend Peyton Reed and his team trying to be different, turning it into an epic Quantum Realm adventure with some serious stakes. I was all for it, and whoever cut those trailers deserves an award for making it look and feel epic, cause it absolutely does not.
Whatever the characters were going through didn't exactly feel organic. It really felt half-assed. We just left Rudd's Scott Lang and his daughter Cassie with a happy reunion in AVENGERS: ENDGAME. So to see Cassie be a rebel and a sudden genius all of a sudden was just so jarring. Speaking of Cassie, Kathryn Newton is pretty horrible in the role. I don't understand why they replaced Emma Fuhrmann. In what little screen time Fuhrmann had in ENDGAME, displaying her tears of joy for her father, felt more compelling than Newton did here. Newton's delivery is so dry and her rebellious attitude comes off as a try hard. It just didn't work for me.
Also a nitpick, but why is every teen a super genius now? If they were going to make her a super genius helping the Pyms create a Quantum device that communicates a signal, then why wasn't her genius at least slightly established perviously? Oh yeah and she gets a super suit and does everything the other two can do. They should have taken a breath or two to develop all this properly showcasing Scott teaching her to be Stature, mirroring Scott's journey to becoming Ant-Man.
Evangeline Lilly has nothing to do in this film and her accurate haircut isn't really doing her any favors in this one. Her father Michael Douglas is just along for the ride as well and her mother Michelle Pfeiffer has a lot more to do this time around. She does the most tropey thing ever, by not revealing information that would have helped the Ant-Family WAY earlier, claiming it was "protection."
Jonathan Majors is the only thing in the film that had any substance. Majors also commands the screen very well and felt menacing in some regard, but yet it still didn't grip me as Brolin's Thanos or Hiddleston's Loki. A lot of that has to do with how crappy the film is. MODOK is also horribly executed. I know the character is a hard sell, BUT this iteration didn't do the character any favors. The Avengers game did a WAY better job handling the character than the MCU. The change is Corey Stoll's Darren Cross is deformed into MODOK after the events of the first film. With one interaction with Cassie he chooses "not to be a dick" and then has a heroic death, in which it all felt so awkward and lame. Such a waste of a villain, he was basically a one-off henchmen.
I feel that Peyton Reed and writer Jeff Loveness missed out on some compelling storytelling by not following through with the premise of Scott wanting to help Kang because of the promise of being given time with Cassie back. All the Quantum Realm stuff also felt small in scale. I compare it to the first THOR film where it just took place in a town, and here there was no grandness to the Quantum Realm, aside from the freedom fighters who oppose Kang's oppression. More could have been explored in that arena.
I also felt there would've been more weight to the end of the film if Scott died with Kang. I knew he wasn't going to diem but I wanted it to happen with the line "I don't have to win, we both have to lose," which could have been something motivates Cassie to join the young Avengers (which it looks like they're building to) moving forward. It's as if they also had a mandate to make the film more family friendly which it seemed like they tried to aim for.
The kick-off to Phase 5 isn't exactly good. I feel as though they dropped the ball, but given their track record (even though it's been meh lately) I don't think the MCU would falter by the time KANG DYNASTY and SECRET WARS comes along, as it's their big tentpole films, but I do think the MCU needs to go back to the drawing board and figure out why Phase 1-3 worked better than it does in Phase 4-5. Currently for me, only NO WAY HOME and WAKANDA FOREVER come out on top compared to the rest.
3/10.